Under the Harvest Moon
by Derek Zolfer
Summary: The past cuts deeper than knives.


"Stop that," Hardin said, glaring at her from his perch atop a crate on the far side of the room. 

Callo Merlose sighed and shifted her position on the cold stone floor, drawing her knees up and wrapping long, pale arms around them in an attempt to warm herself. Like all of Lea Monde, the room was terribly damp and cold; the city reminded the Inquisitor of nothing so much as a vast and long-dead corpse, honeycombed with twisting and crumbling passages like decaying arteries, inhabited by all manner of grotesque creatures, awash in the chill of eternal slumber. 

It was no place for the living, and even in the short span of hours she had been in the city, she could already feel it reaching out to embrace her, to make her a part of its darkness. Already she was changing, seeing things that she never could see before, looking into the past with no effort at all. The Dark had touched her, sunk all the way to the marrow of her bones and given birth to things that were both wondrous and absolutely terrifying. 

Though she feared angering Hardin, what terrified her still more was the fact that she very much wanted to stop spying into his past, but she could not. Her newfound powers were beyond her conscious control, and even if they had not been she would not have wanted to use them. They felt alien, foul, the secretions of the Dark that surrounded her and filled her and threatened to consume her, and she only wished that they would go away. 

_To only be blind,_ she thought. _You have no idea, Hardin. None at all._

"How long will we stay here?" she asked in a low voice, not really expecting an answer from her jailor. She made the attempt at conversation only to drive away the whispers in her head. 

"Until Sydney fetches us," he grunted. 

She blinked. "Are we parcels then, to be carried about and moved, delivered at his whim? 

"Stay your mouth, woman. I'll hear no more of this talk." 

She spied a shadow out of the corner of her eye, and whipped her head in that direction- she'd seen her share of the living dead and spectres both in this city, and even though this room was above ground, dim sunlight seeping through closed shutters, she could feel the power of the Dark all around her. Anything could join them here, and she was defenseless. 

She inhaled. Ghost it was not, but she did not know how to classify her vision, this pale ghostly image, faded and washed out. Her jailor. 

Callo looked to Hardin, still perched on his crate. Now he rested his chin in his hands and frowned at the floor. 

She turned her head to the image once again, and this time it spoke. 

"I was only seventeen. Just a boy." 

It seemed strange to her that Hardin had ever been a boy. He seemed too hard for that, too solid in his beliefs in his loyalty, too whole. Surely, such a man must have been cast from stone or carved from wood, brought into life with one flourish of magic like all those strange beasts from the fairy tales. Of course, before today she had not believed in fairy tales; Lea Monde was perhaps the ultimate cure for skepticism. 

Then the image changed, becoming a younger version of her captor, the hard lines of his face blurring and softening, his worry lines and wrinkles eroding away to smooth plains of flesh. The eyes that looked at her now seemed infinitely less weary, brighter. When the voice spoke it was uncertain, almost trembling, so unlike the voice he used now. 

"I met her at a simple harvest festival. She danced like a snowfly, all pale motion and grace, spinning and dipping and cavorting. She was so beautiful that I hesitated to touch her in the fear that she would melt away at the merest brush of a finger. Dana." 

The boy that had been Hardin sighed, and a second image appeared alongside him, a girl of seventeen or so, with the angular grace and beauty of a stained glass angel despite her rough, homespun dress. Her blonde hair, as fine as cornsilk, reached almost to her knees. Striking green eyes were set above an upturned nose, a delicate mouth, a finely shaped chin. 

The young Hardin shook his head. 

"She was both my ambrosia and my venom. She made me whole only to rend me asunder. It is not a pleasant tale." 

"Tell me," she breathed, hoping her whisper would not reach the ears of the flesh and blood man across the room. 

"We burned crops at the harvest festival. An offering to the old gods, I suppose. My parents were simple people, and our lord was old and sickly. He did not care for the new Church, and did not force us to change our ways. I think perhaps he followed the old ways privately, however he had been converted. And of course we were converted along with him. But he turned his head at our festivals. For that, I am both grateful and sorrowful. 

"The first time I saw her she was dancing. There was always dancing at the festivals, and always people gathered from several villages away. At harvest festival, of course, there was dancing around the great bonfire. She wasn't from our village- I would never have failed to notice her gift, her great beauty. And how she danced- hair and skirts flying, more graceful than a swallow in flight. I have never forgotten it. 

"And she noticed me too. I saw her eyes upon me as she danced." 

The shadow of Hardin fell silent, and Callo wondered if that was all that would be revealed. But soon the figure continued. 

"After the dancing, there was drink and food and storytelling, and although I had lost sight of her sometime in between I later discovered her sitting next to me. She smiled at me, and in her smile I saw a sweetness and goodness I had never before witnessed. She took my breath away. She gave me her name and somehow I gave her mine. I could barely speak, and I knew..." 

It was maddening, the way this story seemed to come in fits and starts. Despite herself, she truly desired to know about Hardin's experience. She tried to tell herself that the better she knew him, the more easily she might escape him, but somewhere inside her this thought rang false. She wanted to know because she wanted to know how this man had come to be in the place that he was. She wanted to see the warm human being inside this cold, hard man. 

"What did you know?" she whispered. 

"I knew the harvest customs. That on this night, any man could take any woman, regardless of any binding marriage vows. Harvest children were considered lucky. 

"I had done this in previous years, but never did I feel so much a boy than when I took her hand and led her out under the bright harvest moon. We lay in the cold grass and talked. I no longer remember the conversation. All I know is that her kisses were sweet, her hands were warm, and her body inviting. 

"I wanted her, and she wanted me. She whispered my name into my hair and told me thus. It was all I needed to hear, my hands were on her white thighs, pushing her skirts up. And then I discovered something so horrible that I gasped and flung myself away. 

"She was both man and woman." 

Callo gasped, and the figure vanished. Hardin stood abruptly from his seat on the crate. 

"It's time to go, Inquisitor," he said. She stared at him in surprise. _Dear God, I never imagined,_ she thought. _That's... disgusting._

She was hard put to swallow her laugh as she followed her jailor out of the dark room and into dim midafternoon sunlight. 


End file.
